Notable Books of the Year 1992

Published: December 6, 1992

Correction Appended

This list has been selected from books reviewed since the Christmas Books issue of December 1991. It suggests only high points in the main fields of reader interest, and it does not include titles chosen by the editors of The Book Review as the Best Books of 1992. Books are arranged alphabetically under subject headings. Art, Music & Popular Culture THE AGE OF MISSING INFORMATION. By Bill McKibben. (Random House, $20.) Two dramatic, intertwined reports -- one an account of the world as reflected in a 24-hour period in the Adirondacks, the other an account of the world as broadcast on 103 television channels in a single day.

ARCHITECTURE: The Natural and the Manmade. By Vincent Scully. (St. Martin's, $40.) In what is nothing less than an interpretation of the whole history of Western architecture, Yale's revered teacher of architecture for some 40 years explores the relationship of buildings to landscape.

ARRESTING IMAGES: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions. By Steven C. Dubin. (Routledge, $29.95.) An ambitious and impressive chronicle of the past decade's battles between conservatives and the iconoclastic artists who push their buttons -- among them Robert Mapplethorpe, Salman Rushdie, Andres Serrano and 2 Live Crew.

THE ART PACK. By Christopher Frayling, Helen Frayling and Ron van der Meer. (Knopf, $40.) An irresistibly seductive book that uses "paper engineering" and a battery of scientific and geometric devices to make art history yield up its secrets.

BEYOND THE BRILLO BOX: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective. By Arthur C. Danto. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) Mr. Danto argues persuasively in these essays that with Andy Warhol's famous boxes art reached its logical end, leaving us with a liberating pluralism.

BILL GRAHAM PRESENTS: My Life Inside Rock and Out. By Bill Graham and Robert Greenfield. (Doubleday, $24.) Twenty-five years of rock-and-roll, as seen through the eyes of the tempestuous visionary whose art was concert promotion and whose signature was throwing tantrums.

CHRISTMAS IN JULY: The Life and Art of Preston Sturges. By Diane Jacobs. (University of California, $30.) With the cooperation of Sturges's surviving relations and friends, Ms. Jacobs has written an affectionate, judicious portrait of the man who, in five years (1940-44) wrote and directed America's most insouciant modern movies and then, just as quickly, destroyed himself.

FLASH IN THE PAN: The Life and Death of an American Restaurant. By David Blum. (Simon & Schuster, $21.) This chronicle of The Falls, a downtown Manhattan restaurant that treated its customers like dirt and attracted the beautiful people for about a year, is full of sharp portraits of schemers and hipsters.

FOR A COWBOY HAS TO SING. By Jim Bob Tinsley. (University of Central Florida, $39.95.) A collection of 60 cowboy songs from the golden age -- 1905-57 -- with brisk, witty, informative introductions to the songs and their composers in Brooklyn, Cleveland, Dublin, Hollywood and other homes on the range.

FRANK CAPRA: The Catastrophe of Success. By Joseph McBride. (Simon & Schuster, $27.50.) This comprehensive biography of the wizard director of "common-man" movies shows they were actually informed by Capra's right-wing politics.

GEORGE CUKOR: A DOUBLE LIFE. A Biography of the Gentleman Director. By Patrick McGilligan. (St. Martin's, $24.95.) A full-bodied account of the brilliant film maker's works, the man himself and his elegantly gay life in a Hollywood that pretended to celebrate all the middle-class decencies.

HIRSCHFELD: Art and Recollections From Eight Decades. By Al Hirschfeld. (Scribners, $50.) An abundant retrospective of the work of this great visual chronicler of the theater.

HOROWITZ: His Life and Music. By Harold C. Schonberg. (Simon & Schuster, $27.50.) A former senior music critic of The New York Times has written an important and accessible biography of the pianist who had an almost demonic power over the keyboard and who feared that he had sold his art for entertainment's sake.

KEEPING A RENDEZVOUS. By John Berger. (Pantheon, $21.) These reflections on art and philosophy demonstrate the astounding range of a British-born essayist, novelist and playwright.

THE LAST DANDY, RALPH BARTON: American Artist, 1891-1931. By Bruce Kellner. (University of Missouri, $34.95.) A sympathetic, informative and just biography of the compulsively workaholic magazine illustrator and restless man about town.

LITTLE LEAGUE CONFIDENTIAL: One Coach's Completely Unauthorized Tale of Survival. By Bill Geist. (Macmillan, $17.) Here is the terror and delight of Little League players and their ambitious parents.

LOUIS I. KAHN: In the Realm of Architecture. By David B. Brownlee and David G. De Long, with essays by others. (Museum of Contemporary Art/ Rizzoli, cloth, $60; paper, $40.) The first comprehensive account of the career of the man who was probably America's most important post-World War II architect; gloriously illustrated.

THE MAESTRO MYTH: Great Conductors in Pursuit of Power. By Norman Lebrecht. (Birch Lane/Carol Publishing, $22.50.) This juicy, garish and tendentious book of more than 50 thumbnail biographies explores the conductor's place in the byzantine world of music and in society.

MARLENE DIETRICH: Life and Legend. By Steven Bach. (Morrow, $25.) A celebration of the one and onliest, with plenty of what appear to be the facts about her private and public careers.

Correction: January 3, 1993, Sunday The description of "Boneyards," by Robert Campbell, on Dec. 6 in The Book Review's list of notable books of 1992 misstated the year in which Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago died. It was 1976, not 1977.